Trump ORDERS Pentagon to BOMB CUBA Next

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Officials in Donald Trump's and Pete Hex's Pentagon have been given uh a new directive. Start getting more serious and start ramping up your preparations for a potential military operation against the island nation of Cuba.

[00:00:15]>> Covering what the corporate media covers up. Hey, it's JT Saskowski with Status Coup. Right now in the news, we are focused so much on the war in Iran that it seems like that is all this country is concerned with right now. But the United States of America contains multitudes. We are able to bomb a foreign country at the same time as we are ignoring Americans healthcare, driving up the cost of their gasoline on top of a whole bunch of other domestic problems that we are quite capable of ignoring at the same time as we are launching these bombing campaigns. And on top of all of that, we are able to plan a an entirely separate military operation this time targeting Cuba. And this is outside of the blockade that the United States is running on Cuba right now. This is a separate military action that is being reported on by people like my guest who is Awen Subsen who is a reporter at Sateo News.

[00:01:19]Swin, thank you for joining me. I want to jump right in and ask um what are the orders that you are reporting on right now that the White House is giving the Pentagon with regards to Cuba? So according to our sources with knowledge of the matter in recent days, as recently as uh just the past few days, past couple of weeks, uh officials in Donald Trump's and Pete Hex's Pentagon, as well in other bowels of the US federal government, uh have been given uh a new directive, something that sounded notably new to the pe people who had heard it, something that had come directly from the Donald Trump White House, which was and including uh to the people at the Pentagon who heard this directly, start getting more serious and start ramping up your preparations for a potential military operation against the island nation of Cuba. This is something where even more so than before, you have to go into another phase of ramped up planning and preparations. So if and when the president of the United States gives the order to go, we are ready to go. um some of the potential military operations and planks that have been discussed at a very high level within recent weeks or months within the Trump Vance administration and discussed rather seriously uh have been doing something like a possible snatch and grab or I think what you could very credibly call kidnapping operation against one or more members of the Cuban regime leadership.

[00:02:55]This is obviously something that would, if executed, mirror what occurred uh in Venezuela when Donald Trump invaded there early in the year. Now, I just want to get some of the obvious caveats and throw clearing out of the way. Just because this is being ramped up and planned for within the Pentagon and the White House and elsewhere doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen.

[00:03:17]Of course, Donald Trump is currently trying to uh to use a crude term at the moment, play hard ball with Cuba and its government in terms of the way that his economic blockade, his economic bombing as some politicians have called it, is currently strangling uh the country of Cuba. If uh that gets to a point in that sort of depraved negotiation uh standpoint where Donald Trump can get a deal that even if the Cubans get to save face and kind of do what they want to do, even if the Castro uh regime as it operates behind the scenes gets to basically remain in power, even if everybody gets to save face and Donald Trump can claim a win, obviously he's going to do that and not try to do a Bay of Pigs 2.0 0 or whatever or Maduro operation 2.0, whatever stupid thing that he and his administration have cooking up uh at the moment.

[00:04:12]>> Have you gotten a sense for how much of this is being driven by Donald Trump as you referenced like he is talking about this so openly right now that he wants to see regime change in Cuba that you know holding open the possibility of military action there. Is this you know you say the orders coming from the White House. Do you have a sense as to whether or not like this is actually originating from President Trump or the reason I asked this is because I want to know how much is Marco Rubio in the driver's seat here >> to a pretty stark degree on these uh fairly bloodthirsty matters. It is Donald Trump. Yes, there are plenty of apparatics and um and Republicans both with a more traditional or non-traditional resume in his inner orbit were backing him on certain things or encouraging certain things. But something that I think a lot of the uh uh so-called MAGA intellectuals who for whatever misbegotten reasons put some faith in Donald Trump as not your daddy's neocon.

[00:05:19]I think something that they're uh missing or at least continuing to willfully miss about particularly the second Trump era is that some of the most hawkish most uh somewhat they may call neoonservative or neoconservative seeming actions of the past year and a half have been driven primarily by Donald Trump. Yes, he may have cheerleaders here and there or people whispering sweet nothings in his ear that end up translating into actual policy, but to a large degree he is in the driver's seat. Even if there are people like uh Marco Rubio or other regime change enthusiasts in his administration who have long wanted some sort of heavy duty action like this and hardcore style punishment uh towards the state of Cuba. I mean, I'll I'll analogize this to uh the Iran war that they're the Trump administration is still trying to get off their plate even as they're planning potential invasions of uh uh of other places in other uh continents on the planet. Um, it is it was taken sort of as a piece of conventionalism that Donald Trump was more of a non-interventionist than uh uh neocons or neocon adjacent people like the Marco Rubio's of the world. Uh the idea that MAGA or Donald Trump was ever not very wararmongering ever since 2015 has always been a lie. It's always been a lie. But for now, let's just take the argument as it is, as if you and I are people who are stupid enough to have bought it. Um, >> yeah, I was told that President Trump was going to be the peace president.

[00:07:03]>> Exactly. Right. And he still likes to comically brand himself that way as, you know, as even though it's even more hollow now than it's ever been within the past decade. Having said that, uh, a conventionalism did prevail for the for most of the past decade like that. like, oh, people like Marco Rubio are the Iran hawks and the Cuba hawks and the Venezuela hawks and Donald Trump, even though he may say rattle, even though he get may get very catty in public with his threats against certain leaders, he's the guy who he he he's not exactly that. He says the Iraq war was a mistake, etc., etc. So the people who give him a pass sort of on that era of neoonservative Republican politics when it comes to the Iran war in the weeks or months long runup to it. Um the person who was most enthusiastic for war with Iran of anybody in the Trump cabinet was Donald Trump himself. Even people like Marco Rubio, who gained reputations as hawks in their years, if not decades in politics, were uh not fullthroatedly embracing this. If anything, they were sort of squeamish about the idea, thought it might have the possibility of turning into a major political disaster and bloodbath and quagmire abroad and weren't very gung-ho about it. I mean, with a possible exception possible exception of Pete Hegv. is arguably right now the most hawkish member of the Trump cabinet. So again, it's a lie and it's always been a lie. It's interesting you're, you know, you're talking about everybody's going, you know, go along to get along with this president and whatever whims he has. It's very clear to me that President Trump is high on his own supply after the, you know, quote unquote success that was the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and seemingly thought that Iran would be a similar cakewalk and now maybe we're are we just is it the same thing playing out here now with Cuba where everybody's just go along to get along passing down the orders.

[00:09:05]President Trump wants to go into Cuba.

[00:09:08]So, we're making plans to go into Cuba and there's no there's no push back happening behind the scenes. I mean, are we just watching Iran play out again except now in the Caribbean?

[00:09:19]Well, I think people within uh the Trump Vance administration are convinced that if they did do something really hyperviolent against Cuba that it would not turn into what Iran currently is uh right now because whatever you can say about uh the Iranian regime, I think the capacity for them putting up a fight and the massive gargantuan economic leverage they have with the straight of Hormuz and other things like that is something that you would not necessarily get in the Caribbean including uh with Cuba.

[00:09:54]Um having said that uh look the you are correct that one reason why Donald Trump thought the is Iran war which is now going remarkably disastrous for him was going to be you know a pretty easily a cakewalk or whatever. One reason is like in the runup to it when he would be talking to his closest adviserss or other people at a senior level in his administration, he would frequently bring up in private conversation when he was trying to convince other people, some of whom seemed more skeptical than he was, that what we would do in Iran is going to be quote unquote easy. and he would constantly bring up look at what I was able to do in Venezuela with Maduro that supposedly nobody else had been able to do >> something like that before. So there absolutely was an element and this is uh for people who I was talking to at the time who were talking to the president directly where high on his own supply is a thousand% something that uh you can describe one of the biggest reasons why Donald Trump allowed himself basically to fall ass backwards into this uh regional blood bath in the middle. The reason I ask that, the reason I ask that, Swinn, is that um, you know, it's one thing if you destabilize a government in Iran, you know, it's half a world away, and any direct fallout here on the United States itself is likely to be muted just by distance. But when you destabilize a country like Cuba that is just 90 miles off the Florida coast, I mean, you're really opening the door to the possibilities of things like a a a migrant crisis. Is there any qualms inside this administration that like that is a potential outcome here? Like is anybody thinking about worst case scenario?

[00:11:51]>> Oh yeah, they absolutely are. But just like with the Iran war and all the other stuff that Donald Trump is doing all around the world, like look, if he gave them the order to invade Greenland tomorrow, they would do it and do it with eating grins plastered all across their faces both in public and within the Oval Office the whole way through. The same would go for what you're talking about with Cuba. This isn't really an administration that is uh looking that that is sort of kind of superficially considering things like negative consequences or blowback. But those considerations and that calculus is dwarf compared to how much they've been subsumed into the god king emperor cult of uh Trumpism. So, I mean, it's a a little bit horrifying to think of the supposedly democratic American government in those terms, but I mean, I think what we've seen time and time again over the past year and a half is you can't take that stuff for granted anymore. It's like the authoritarian nature of the cultishness of Trumpism, which kind of pervades every corner of the federal government and elsewhere right now. Okay, even if we did do it, even if there is potential for negative consequences or blowback, it would more closely resemble something like Venezuela and not the horror show we're currently seeing in the Middle East.

[00:13:14]There is a chance that that operation could have gone massively sideways. That could have become an epic disaster for the Trump fans administration. It just happened to not go that way. I think if you talk to people who have access to things like afteraction reports that are kept secret currently within the Pentagon and other parts of the US federal government, they will talk to you in a similar kind of grim way about the Venezuela operation in terms of like, yeah, it went off without a hitch, but only barely. It could have easily gone completely sideways. And the fact that they talk that way about how Venezuela went and very easily could have went and now that that is being used as the rubric for basically Trump's war mongering and rampaging around the globe for all these other ter territories and country kind of that that's disturbing to a guy like me because that's like using um an example of like oh I drove blackout drunk home from the bar to my house that was 5 miles away and everything turned out fine and nobody got killed so I might as well do it again. That's basically what they're doing with MAGA foreign policy right now. And it's uh distressing to use a polite term.

[00:14:31]>> Yeah. Distressing but important. And it's only thanks to the work that folks like you at Sateo are doing and some of the other progressive independent media like Dropsite are doing that I'm even, you know, aware of what is happening in Cuba right now because I think so much of the media attention is just devoted to Iran coverage. So, thank you for the coverage that you're offering on this.

[00:14:52]Um, for folks who want to keep up on what is happening, what is the best way that they can can find you and follow your work? Uh you can follow my work and my uh colleagues work at ziteo.com spelled zeo.com.

[00:15:08]We also have a uh YouTube page and you can find us on basically all of your social media platforms. So feel free to uh subscribe at zateo.com or a YouTube page or elsewhere. And if you would like to come and say hi to me, you can uh uh send a nice or flagrantly rude comment in my mentions um on blue sky. I don't really use Twitter anymore. Sorry. Uh, but I'm on blue skyswin 2424.

[00:15:37]Come say hi.

[00:15:39]>> Got it. I look forward to dropping you many uh rude messages in your mentions.

[00:15:42]Thank you very much, SW. I appreciate the time. All right, take care.